Dr.K was in his house. Outside his house, under a huge Teak tree, a Kumky elephant named Selva was standing. With its boat shaped huge tusks it was scratching the barks of the tree. As it saw me it raised its ears and sniffed me raising its trunks a little and wished me a Good morning with a muffled sound and then proceeded to flapping its ears.

I was surprised by seeing the Doctor there at that time. He told me to come in hearing my foot-steps. “How are you here at this time?” he asked. I said, “That should be my question. How come you are here?” “I had a surgery on a Kumky. Raman is his name. He had a big blister in his thighs. He is an aged fellow. I have been acquainted with him for thirty years. Very patient and also has a good sense of humor! He will last for another ten years,” he said.

The Doctor asked if I wanted tea as I sat down. “I will make it myself,” I said. “Then make it only for yourself,” he said. I was feeling pretty excited as I was making my tea. My hands were shaking and I thought I would drop the cup. Looking at my excitement, he asked, “Have you fallen in love or what?” “No, Sir,” I said. “Have you observed that the description of Nature would be correct in Sangam literature[1]? But Kabilar is an exception. Look at this,” he said and quoted a line by Kabilar.

“What is its meaning?” I asked. “It says that the elephant which gets scared by the spark of light falling from the burning torch of the Kuravan[2] who is guarding the produce of the jungle would also get similarly scared by the stars in the sky”. I was delighted by the comparison. He continued, “Not only the elephant but all the animals possess intelligence in such things. If you point a toy gun at a monkey for the second time, it will recognize it. An elephant would recognize the change if you recorded the voice of another and made it listen to it.” He paused, and looking at me he said, “What is going on? You are not listening.”

“Nothing,” I said. “No, you are acting strange. Come on, what is the problem?” He asked. He insisted on letting him know. I hadn’t kept anything away from him. I started telling him how I had this thought two years before: that he should get a ‘Padhmashri’ award. I had collected all the information about him and sent it to the Cultural Ministry. His name hadn’t appeared in the list that time. No one had given any importance to it.

The next time, I had started ‘lobbying’. I had three friends who were working for English journals. I had a few others working in the Central government. For one year I kept working on it. I used all my friends. I found many avenues for it once I started looking into it. The various avenues of bureaucracy were familiar to me as the various avenues in a forest were to Dr.K and I could hence take my case to its destination.

In fact, it was Dr.K’s personality that helped me more than anything. I could easily grab the attention of anyone who could lend his ears and could also touch his heart by portraying Dr.K’s personality. I could convince him that it was an opportunity to realize that he still had a human heart to involve in a fine deed of his life to recognize someone as Dr.K. I made him feel that he proved himself as a good human being in considering his case. Quite a few officials were moved by him and started speaking high of him. A few of them told me that they revered a person as him.

Now there was only a few more hours left for the announcement to be made public. “I want to be with you at that time, Sir,” I said. He didn’t offer me a smile and brush it aside as was his habit of response to a complement. Nor did he look indifferent to it and continued doing his work. With an exasperated look, he took a book. I looked at him eagerly. He stared at me. I was taken aback by the anger in his eyes. I told him faintly, “You didn’t say anything about it.” I saw that he was hesitating to say what he felt and I persisted on telling me.

“I didn’t know that you had so much of interest in the power game. I had different expectations about you,” he said. He stopped me when I was about to say something. “I am not arguing. I am not good at it. Leave it…” he continued in an angry tone I had hardly heard from him. After thinking for a while, he said, “Look, I must have seen around fifty officers in this forest. Everyone would leave the forest in a while. They would move to the city for some reason. They would only mentally get away from it as they physically left. The forest then is only a set of data for them.”

“I have thought a lot about it. There is only one reason. There is no power game in a forest. A man can enjoy the sensation of power in two different ways. He can use it on those who are below him. Or he can become ambitious and keep aiming for more of it those above him possess. Both have their titillations for him. But there is no way for either in this forest. It is only written in a paper that you have this forest under your power. But in reality, you are under its command. Look at him outside the door. Do you think Selva is under your command? He is the king in this forest. The six foot tusk in his trunk is his scepter. If he is getting along with human beings it means that this King has good regards for them and loves them …”

“There is no way upwards in your career for you here. When you are here you would always feel that those in your rank are going ahead elsewhere. Hence, you keep running. Running away from the responsibility you have towards the forest. I thought you would be different. Well …” he appeared unsteady for a while as he walked. He continued angrily, “What was its name? Brahmashree?”. I told him that the name of the award was Padmashree. “Okay”, he continued, “What do I do with that in this forest? Can I tell Selva that he has to be respectful with me since I am a Brahmashree?”

“You can do something for this forest only when you understand it. And if you want to understand it, you have to live in it. And if you want to live in it, you have to give up the lust for power, fame, money etc and etc that govern your world and live like the monkeys and elephants here. These should be your kith and kin. Go and have a look outside. Look at Selva, do you think you can have a relative as him? If you knew its noble mind and its boundless love, you would know who mattered more to you. If you had felt it was an honor to be acquainted with that elephant, would you have ever thought that a piece of paper written by some idiots was greater than that?”

I saw that burning face after a long time. He was burning with indignation as he did when he read Byron’s poem for the first time to me. I could hear him roaring, Man, vain insect!that sounded like the loud trumpeting sound of a big Tusker. I was burning with shame. I left suddenly when Dr.K came behind me asking me to stop. Seeing me hesitating he said, “I am sorry.”

I became emotional. With my heads bent, I said, “I didn’t think so, Doctor. I just wanted people to know you. Till I came here I didn’t have any idea that a life blessed as this existed. I never knew that I would be seeing a new world. Please believe me. I promise you that I will never pollute the memories of all these years of my life with you by doing anything that will tarnish your name”.

“I didn’t know till I met you, nor was I taught in my school and college, that a life different from what is perceived as a successful one by my generation existed. To make money, to establish a status, to succeed in school only to end up going abroad, were my drives. Those who ended up in America and made good money alone were symbols of success for me. There are thousands like me growing up in India. It is a generation without any ideals. A generation that knew not what sacrifice meant. A generation that didn’t even know that the finest sources of happiness existed right under its feet…”

“The person who throws a beer bottle in the jungle is also the same person who is grown up in this society. He works in the software and the multinational industry. He earns one lakh rupees a month. He speaks English incoherently. He thinks he is a born genius. It is beyond our control that our country is in his hands. I wanted at least a ten percent of such people to know that a life and a world wonderful as this existed.”

“We haven’t had a cursed generation as our children’s in India. The people who shape their minds are those who never had any mind in them. They are those who have succeeded in life through hook or crook. An entire generation is running after them today. I wanted to show that there still existed a possibility of an idealistic life. That there still exists a condition for a Gandhiji to live among us. It would be a wonderful thing even if ten people were impressed by it.”

“I am not so dumb to think that I can honor you with a silly award. But as a student paying his master, I wanted to do something from my part. I wanted to show you that I and my generation recognized you. Anand helped me. I am sorry if what I did was not appropriate.” The more I spoke, the more my mind cleared. Dr.K was surprised at my eloquence. He said, “Enough of it, Shakespheare. I am going out now. Do you want to come with me?” Those words were sufficient for me. My mind lightened as a tree became lightened after it shook off the snow that covered it. We took Selva to the elephant camp. We saw that he was also having the urge to go there by the way he quickly responded. When we reached the camp there were quite a few trumpets to welcome him.

“He is a real Tusker, a Casanova,” said the doctor. I smiled at him. As he entered there were forty eight trunks that rose up and welcomed him. He got into his work after embracing them all. He was creating his reports examining each one of them. I wrote the notes as he dictated them. And as always, there was a featuring of Shelley, Kambar, Paranar[3] and witty anecdotes from the American Nature Study Society in between. We washed our hands a little later and ate Roti rolls. Mine had chicken inside it. The doctor was a vegetarian.

I had forgotten the radio till that evening. At four-thirty Selvaraj came in search of me and said, “There have been a lot of phone calls for you from Delhi, Sir. I told them to call you here at the Doctor’s house.” I drove to the Doctor’s house and called Anand through his phone. The first thing he said as he picked the phone was, “I am very sorry. I don’t know how to say this.” Though I knew on my way there that I had expected this, I still felt terribly upset. Unable to stand, I sat on the chair. “The minister had added some other name yesterday itself. To hide it and pacify me, he had spoken so nicely yesterday. He is cunning as a fox. I am still unable to believe it. They are giving that award to even cinema actors who have nothing to do with it! I am very sorry, let’s try it next time too…”

“It is okay, what can you do?” I said. “That old sly fox…” he continued. I cut it short saying, “Foxes don’t do such things. Bye now…” and cut the phone. I sat for a while holding my head on my hands. The Doctor would be least bothered by it. I need not even inform that to him. But as I was driving back to him, I was fully occupied by it. What did I expect from them? Why am I so disturbed? Hadn’t I known their true colors?

But I had expected something else. I thought that such great ideals would touch the innate sense of goodness in man. Gandhiji acquired his strength through that. All great ideals depend on it. Did I try to test it in my conditions? Did I vainly imagine that its roots would still be alive today?

I stopped on my way at a valley and got on my feet. The greenery was soothing. The small flies that were buzzing around reflected sparks of light. My eyes were flooded with that greenery. Moisture creates vegetation… Life signifies moisture… My thoughts were running wild. They only pierced open the mental controls that held me. I burst into tears standing in that valley. I was crying as if I wanted to get rid of the entire feeling of emptiness in my mind through my tears.

After many moments when I became self-conscious of the state of silence that my mind had transcended into releasing myself thus, I drove back. I was feeling very tired as if I had run many kilometers. I went straight to the doctor who was measuring the size of a baby elephant. The moment he saw me, he knew it. “What, has the balloon burst?” he asked. Smiling, he continued, “Shall we continue with our work?”

His presence lightened me. We had work to do till it became dark. We then returned together in our jeep. All our way, Dr.K was speaking about a new research paper on the elephant he was working on. The elephant needed to be domesticated at one phase of the history of human life. Man needed it for carrying and moving heavy loads. Without the elephant, the magnificent Temple of Tanjore wouldn’t have been possible. But man doesn’t need elephants anymore. Ours is the time of mechanical cranes that are much stronger than the elephant. In our time the elephant is needed only for decoration and religious ceremonies. And as specimens in the Zoos.

“They should be banned from being kept in the Temples. They are not the place for an elephant to live. It should always be seeing greenery. In our past, they were treated for carrying the Kings. Today they are brought up fed with rice! They are treated as beggars begging for money. What nonsense! The vile creature that man is, he should be ashamed to offer alms to a mighty being as that! There is no other animal that is humiliated as the elephant brought up in the Temples. This should be banned.”

“There will be a lot of resistance to it in the name of Religion. But there was resistance to so many other things a hundred years before that are not anymore in practice today. We should let the elephant free. He is the king of the forest. To treat him as a porter and a beggar is an insult for mankind. Our people won’t understand such things. What do they know about a forest? They come to a forest only for boozing and prostitution. I should bring up this issue in European journals. Our people listen to them when they take it. Even today the Europeans are their masters!”

Right after arriving at his house, he gave me his big thesis to me and said, “Read this. Even today morning I was working on it.” It was seventy pages of type-written matter. I started reading it. He had gathered a lot of information of his experiences over several years. He had listed the information of the physical and mental health conditions of two hundred elephants that were brought up in various Temples in India. The major issue was corruption in their maintenance expenses. They were fed less than necessary. Their food mostly consisted of the remains of the devotees’ food.

It was late in the night. “Are you leaving? Why don’t you stay for the night? You look tired,” he said. Since I have had the habit of staying with him in the night, I had my own bed and a blanket. I continued reading his thesis, sleeping in my bed. Dr.K prepared dinner in half an hour. We ate silently. The wind was howling outside. “I don’t think they would accept to a ban right away. This is a democratic country. Our courts would stand in between. It can only proceed slowly. But why not give it a start? It should be settled sometime…” he said.

“I have a plan till then. Once a year all the Temple elephants would be taken to a nearby forest and kept there for a month. They would recover quickly in a month’s time inside a forest. The elephant is a wild animal. It yearns for the forest always. It would become cheerful the moment it saw the woods and water bodies. Did you see that part of the report? The Temple elephants are always tense. Most of them have severe diabetes. Hence they never recover from the wounds in their legs.”

Dr.K had that alternate plan ready. He was about to submit it to the Government. He had charted out the maintenance expenses of bringing them to the forests and then taking them back to their respective Temples. As always, it was an exhaustive report that had accurate details. “I gave a report once to the Paris Zoo. I used that as a proto-type for this one,” he said. I couldn’t help feeling one more time how much he deserved that award. It would have taken him up further. His words would have acquired more importance.

I slept at 10 PM itself. As I slept, my self-pity and the emptiness in my mind occupied me again. I was afraid if I would start weeping again. My mind was wandering as I kept my eyes shut. Before they extended as thoughts, I fell asleep as I was tired. When I woke up there was light in the room. Dr.K was putting on his sweater. I woke up and asked him what the matter was. “I hear some sound outside. I smell elephants too,” he said. “Do you think that there is an elephant herd outside?” I asked. “They won’t come on this side without any reason,” he said as he took his torch and was about to leave. I woke up, put on my sweater and followed him. We put on our boots and got into the woods. There was a spotless darkness that hung like a screen before us. We then noticed a few stains in it that gathered together and formed the boundaries of the forest and also the dark sky above. Behind them the dark woods loomed.

Dr.K had noticed the elephant already. “A baby,” he said. “Must be two years old.” “Where?” I asked. At the spot he pointed in the dark, I found a baby elephant in a few moments. Its small white tusks became visible. It should be my height. I could even see its flapping ears now. “It wouldn’t come alone at its age. Let’s go and see” he said. We didn’t want to use the flash light since its light would make invisible the surroundings. Hence we went in the dark. In a few moments even the blades of the grass became visible to us.

The baby elephant faintly trumpeted as it tried to sniff at him. “Easy, Easy” said the Doctor as it came slowly forward. It appeared as if it was limping. “I think it is injured,” I said. “Yes,” said the Doctor. The baby elephant stopped again and trumpeted that sounded like the mooing of a Jersey cow. It staggered as it started moving forward. Dr.K told me to stop and went forward closer to it. The baby elephant welcomed him swinging its trunk and shaking his head quickly. When he touched its tusk it placed its trunk on his shoulder, which slid on him as a heavy snake.

The Doctor called me to come closer to him. He calmed down the baby elephant patting it repeatedly. With its small trunk it tried a few times to pull further from his shoulder and sniff me. I took a step backward. He said “I have to put him to sleep. He won’t understand it. Please bring my medical kit.” I ran to his house and brought him his kit.

Dr.K gave an injection in its mouth. In the typical manner of baby elephants it started swinging its trunk between its forelegs and to its front for a while and then shook its body. It also tried to sniff me a few times shaking its head sideways. Slowly its movements stopped. It slid on its sides slowly and lay down with its stretched legs. Its rapid breath through its nostrils touched my cheeks.

“Light please,” the Doctor asked. It was what we thought. A beer bottle again. This time its lower end was pushing out of its legs. Since the baby was not heavy yet and since it had happened only very recently, the bottle hadn’t gone deep inside. The doctor pulled it out. The blood soaked his hands. He rubbed his hands all over the sides and said “I don’t think there is any more inside.” But still he was rubbing softly his hand all over the flesh to check if he had missed anything. “Well, he is almost clean. He is lucky,” he said and bandaged the leg with cotton soaked in medicine.

“He will wake up in an hour and will return to Mudhumalai in the morning,” he said. “What, go to Mudhumalai?” I asked. “Yes, he has come from there. You have seen him too,” he said. I was surprised. “Yes, do you remember that incident at Mudhumalai one and half years before when we removed a similar beer bottle off an elephant’s leg? He was the one standing under the huge Morinda coreia tree. He was tiny then, had the size of a baby bull.” “How did you know?” I asked. “Can’t you now recognize a man you saw there?” he replied. The Doctor wiped his hands with the cotton and put them all in the paper bag. “He came all the way? It is amazing,” I said. I have known that elephants had a sharp sense of direction. They can track the direction for even three hundred kilometers. They don’t forget even minute details. But I didn’t understand how they tracked the way from Mudhumalai. They might have memorized our scent in that forest. Or else they might have come here previously.

But I was surprised that a baby came all the way. The doctor peered at the dark forest after we stepped on the porch of his house. Some movements were showing up in the darkness before us. We could discern a big herd of elephants in the dark. It was the one that we had seen at Mudhumalai. I was about to switch on the flash light. “No,’ said the Doctor. I could recognize the elephant we treated there through its slanted manner of walking. They were all standing in a semicircle with their ears flapping.

“They will take him with them, let’s go,” he said. When we turned, suddenly we heard the loud trumpet of twenty elephants together. A pleasant sensation ran upon my spine. I stood there speechless moved to tears. They all raised their trunks and repeatedly trumpeted. It was as if the heavens had opened wide and the skies were singing the Lord’s glory that pervaded the entire universe with his blessing.

“Let’s go inside,” the Doctor said.

The earliest available Tamil literature (600 BC – 300 AD)

The nomads who lived mostly in the jungles and who prominently feature in early and medieval Tamil literature.

Another poet of the Sangam period. Dr.Krishnamoorthy admired Sangam Literature and Byron.

Like this:

I slowly got used to the forest animals through him. I learned how to climb up the Kumki elephant[1] pushing myself through its folded legs to its forehead and take a ride on it in the forests. It never ceased to surprise me to see an elephant measure its height along with the one who was riding on it. I touched the legs of a bear in respect when Dr.K once tied a bandage on an injured one. I gathered the droppings of the Sambars as samples for Dr.K’s study. In a month I had acquired the sensibility to treat worms as the infants of insects.

I would feel amazed to see the force of life in the fat worms that ate ceaselessly and kept crawling all the time. Were they little specks of life? They gave me flashes of knowledge that this universe was filled with an unknowable wonder. Their sole command was to eat. The wings and the eggs are inside those small beings. It possessed a collective conscience that was beyond human imagination to face every adversity, fight against it and succeed in living.

Dr.K would say that man shouldn’t fight with insects. The biggest mistake man did was to compare himself with insects as if they were seperate entities, whereas they had a collective intelligence and consciousness. There were millions of insect species that renewed themselves everyday in numbers and kinds. In sheer numbers they were a bigger population than that of man. The insect that fought against the pesticide was not a single life, but a swarm itself. And the collective mind of the swarm as well. It will easily resist the pesticide. I would take a white worm in my hand. When it crawled on my arm, I felt the complex sensation of holding an infant. It was a soft and very simple form of life. But in it resided the endless possibilities and the wonderful energy of life. It was a representative of the great force that was behind all forms of life. Occasionally, I would bring the worm near my lips and look at its eyes — the eyes that did not see anything but food. But I would feel that it knew me. It had a micro-eye. And through that, the insect kingdom looked at me. I would pass it a smile. It was probable that it would eat me too to grow. It was okay. In this earth he and I were the same. I would feel like kissing it.

Dr.K had a great fascination for literature. Though he would never turned back any old tribal woman without treatment, nor postponed even for one day the treatment of any animal, he still found the time to publish research articles in scientific journals of international acclaim. The magazines that contained his articles were arranged neatly in his book-case. While the other articles in such magazines would be in a strictly scientific idiom that was hard to follow, his articles would be in a cheerful tone mixed with gentle humor and interspersed with beautiful poetry. Byron was his favorite poet.

Once when I went with him into the forest, he waved his hands for the driver to stop the jeep. In a bush that he pointed his fingers at, I could see the ears of a Wild dog. I understood that it was spying on us. He pointed me another spot. There was another Wild dog there. The entire picture became clear to me soon. There were six of them spread out in six directions safeguarding something in the centre.

“It is probably their chief or one in labor lying immobile there,” said the doctor in English. With his eyes fixed in that spot he whispered, “Please be here. Don’t move or raise your hands. I will go alone and see what was going on.” I didn’t want to let him go alone. He told me that he was familiar to them. But I further tried to prevent him saying, “I have heard that the wild dogs are dangerous.” “Yes, they are. But this is my duty,” he got down the jeep and started walking towards them.

A cold breeze passed over me. I touched the small pistol that I carried in my pocket. Its cold metal comforted me. The doctor climbed over the slope and went close to them. The first one in the bush raised its head and looked at him with its ears folded in the front. As he got closer, it pulled fully its nose and observed him. The other dogs were silently closing on him from both sides. In a few moments he was surrounded by the six dogs.

Dr.K went closer to the first one and stood without moving. Both him and the dog stood as if they were rapt in a silent prayer. Then the dog bent fully and came crawling towards him. It smelled him stretching its face. After a quick foot back it smelled him again in the same manner. It was making strange noises. All the other dogs were alert with their heads held straight.

The first one came close to him and started licking his boots. It placed his legs on him and smelled his hands. I could see its body language changing. Its body relaxed and its tails started wagging. With its eyes on him and its tails wagging, it walked sideways for a while ran a little further and then came galloping towards him, stopped near him and ran back again to do the same. It seemed as if it treated the doctor as a special guest and expressed its happiness in that manner. That was how it probably expressed its joy.

I could see the tails of the other dogs wagging as well. A different dog now took the position of the first while the other four went back to their positions. Dr.K was bent and looking at something in the bush. He sat down on the ground. I could only hear some sounds that puppies make. He returned after half an hour. He got in the jeep and ordered to leave.

“What happened, Sir?” I asked. “Its chief was lying there wounded,” he said. “A cheetah must have attacked it. It had ripped its left leg. It might have torn the bone too.” “What can we do?”, I asked. “We need not do anything. It is their world and their lives. We can only look for a couple of things. If it was man-made, we have to find who did it and bring him to justice. Or if it had any contagious disease, we should take the necessary action immediately.”

“Won’t it die, if we left it like that?”, I asked. “It won’t die. But it won’t be the chief anymore. The one who took me to him would probably become the chief,” he said. “Why don’t we treat him with some medicines?” I asked further. Dr.K laughed. “What medicines? Our usual antibiotics? Do you know the resistance level of wild animals? If we get them used to antibiotics, we will have to construct primary health centers even inside the forests, one in every three kilometers distance.”

“It quite amazed me to see the dog recognizing you,” I said. “What do you know about a dog? It is such a Divine animal. Man thinks so high of himself. He thinks that animals don’t have a soul or any rational sense. And in the heaven and the God that he created with his despicable intelligence he has no place for animals! Nonsense!… Dr.K was angry when he said that. “There is a poem by Byron titled Epitaph to a Dog[2] . Have you read it?”

“No,” I said. His face was still flushed with anger. He started reciting the poem as if he were chanting an incantation:

When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth, Unknown by Glory, but upheld by Birth…

These lines became imprinted in my mind as a reminder of his face from that moment through the animation I saw in his face as he expressed it.

But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own,Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone…

I wondered if these lines were the message of his life itself. From that moment onwards I became aware of the bondage through friendship defining the animal’s soul that animated its entire being and seemed to be telling me, “I am yours. You are me. You can rely on me, as you would, on any God, you believe. For, if there is a belief of a divinity, I can only be an overflowing drop of it”.

There was a vile human being near the dog, looking at the skies entirely oblivious of it and yearning for something. It was me — yearning for power, pleasure, distinctions, the various ways to attain them, the false faces I had to put on and the meaningless words I had to utter. Man, vain insect: I could hear Byron’s roar through Dr.K’s angry face. With the roar of lightning and thunderbolts, the skies seem to point a finger at man and say:

My senses went numb and my eyes filled with tears. I felt ashamed at myself. It was as if I was stinking with dirt covered all over me. I wish I could shake myself off all the dirt in me as if I could remove a dirty shirt and gallop all over the pristine grasslands. The wind and the sun would then embrace me as one of them. There would still be pain and disease. And, death as well. But there would be nothing vile. Nothing, base.

Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust, Degraded mass of animated dust!

I couldn’t continue driving the jeep. Tears were flowing down my cheeks. Dr.K was sitting motionless, his eyes averting me.If you want to see man’s depraved nature in its stark reality, you should be in a forest. The tourists who come there would mostly be educated people and would also be well-placed in their professions. They come from their cities carrying their liquor and spicy snacks. All their way they would be eating and drinking. They would throw up, they would blare their horns in the silent slopes, they would play their stereo players in the loudest volume to accompany their unruly dance, they would even scream profane words at the silent mountain space.

They would insult every wild animal. They would feed the monkeys fruits that had chili powder inside them, they would throw stones at the deers, and if the elephants came on their way, they would blare their car-horns and scare them. It was entirely beyond my understanding why they would violently throw empty liquor bottles in the forests! I have inspected many vehicles and when I found liquor bottles, I have lashed the tourists with my belt in frenzy. I have even made them stand shivering in the cold with only their under- garments. Even then I couldn’t control the broken bottles getting gathered inside the forest.

More than any other animal, it is most dangerous for the elephant. Its feet are like sacks of earth. These bottles would lay broken under the trees. If the elephant stepped over it, it will enter fully into its leg because of the animal’s enormous weight. If it walked a little further, it would get jammed inside its feet. The elephant cannot walk after that. It will get infected in two days. Worms would spawn into it. They would pierce into the flesh through the pus. If they could get to the blood vessels or the bone, then the elephant can only die.

With its swollen legs the elephant would wander for many days in the forest. At one stage when it cannot walk, it will support itself bending on a tree and stay put. In five days, the elephant that is used to drinking thirty liters of water, eating two hundred kilograms of food and walking fifty kilometers every day would be reduced to a skeleton of bones. Its backbones and cheekbones would start showing through its skin. The constant movement of its ears would come to a standstill. It will support itself on its trunks for a while standing on its hind legs. After that it will support itself on its forehead. A day later it will fall on its side and with its belly rising up like a rock from its other side. It would lie shivering with only its tail and trunk moving around and it eyes slowly blinking. The other elephants would stay around it shaking their heads and trumpeting.

The elephant would eventually die. Even after the last time its trunk showed any movement, the elephant group would be wailing around it for many days. They will then leave it and move to a place many kilometers away. Because of the density of its skin, till its flesh rotted, no animal in this forest can eat it. The wild dogs would be the first to find the rotten carcass and would tear the trunk and the hind portions and eat them. The vultures would slowly begin to land on the carcass. Hyenas would then come in groups from afar for their share. The king of the forest who had a hundred and seventy times more the number of Neurons would finally be reduced to a heap of bones.

Once when we got the news that there was an elephant wandering with a swollen leg in Mudhumalai, I went there with Dr.K. The Kurumba tribe who were natives there had spotted where it was wandering. Along with a few of them we went to the spot in our jeep. It was also through a rugged horse-lane. After driving a long distance, we stopped the jeep and I went into the forest along with Dr.K. Two armed Forest guards and two of the Kurumbascarrying a few things accompanied us.

Dr.K was moving forward without any difficulty parting his way through the bamboo leaves that could cut your skin. The roots that were intertwined all over the ground made walking behind him difficult for me. I held the trees for support and followed him. Though he was nearing seventy, Dr.K had a good physique. The forest was to him as water was to a fish. In a few moments we could smell the presence of elephants. We knew that they had noticed us. We could hear their faint roars. In a short while, we found that in a green piece of earth beyond a pond that had a thick growth of bamboo on both sides, where the sunlight itself appeared green, there was a group of twelve elephants.

Searching for more elephants around we found that there were another six that were grazing in the bamboo bushes. We also spotted four baby elephants. Dr.K equipped himself with all his gadgets. One looked like an air-gun. The bullet was in fact an anesthetic tablet. He was looking intensely at the injured elephant through his binoculars. I guessed that he was calculating its weight. He could determine the strength of the anesthetic to be administered only after determining its weight.

I was observing his focused manner of work. After he was all set, he said, “All of you stay here…I will go and check.” I knew well that I couldn’t refuse his orders. He continued, “It is standing under a tree. If it fell down, it will get hurt. I have to bring it to the marshes. The other elephants wouldn’t know what I am trying to do. So they will resist.” I asked him, “Do the elephants know that the injury was caused by man?” He said they sure knew it and that he had to deal with the situation.

Dr.K slowly walked down the slope, crossed the pond and set his foot on the swamp. The footprints of the elephants had made big holes all over the swamp. He carefully stepped over them on their edges and went close to them. The big one in the center suddenly made a loud noise. Hearing that all the other elephants also trumpeted loud. One of them turned towards him. Its ears were moving fast. Shaking its head it came fast towards the doctor. Dr.K stood without moving. The elephant shook its head more and took a couple of feet towards him.

It was a warning sign that an elephant would attack when it shook its head. I stood frozen. I could hear even my heart beat. I felt like rushing to the doctor and standing by his side. If I stood there doing nothing when the elephant tore him to pieces and if I would have to carry his dead body, I thought, I would regret it my whole life. And yet I couldn’t move. I felt as if tongue went dry and was pulled inside my mouth that was empty now!

Dr.K stood there for a few minutes without moving. The elephant too now stood motionless. It appeared as if all the other elephants were watching him. Dr.K started walking towards it. The elephant too resumed walking towards him, slowly though. It didn’t shake its head now. Its head was bent. Which was also a warning sign! Dr.K went straight towards it and stood before it. It stood silent. Time crept by. I didn’t know what was going on. I felt as if many hours passed by.

Suddenly, the elephant started to retreat. The big one in the centre of the herd after roaring at Dr.K coiled its tails and cooled down. One by one the elephants in that herd started to climb the slope and disappeared into the bamboo grove. I stood befuddled, staring at the sight, unable to believe what I saw, till the last elephant’s rolling tail disappeared into the greenery. Dr.K signalled with his arms to come to him. We went to him crossing the pond.

Seeing us, the injured elephant tried to charge at us shaking its head. But it faintly trumpeted and stood there. The doctor wanted us to come further. The forest guards stopped there. But I and the Kurumbas went forward. The elephant shook itself from the tree it wassupporting itself on and started walking towards us. Its hind leg was swollen and was twice the size of its other legs. It was dragging it as it tried to walk.

The doctor shot the bullet tablet at it after it moved four feet. As the bullet landed on a soft spot a little above its shoulder, its body shook and it stood frozen. It stopped moving its ears for a while and started flapping it vigorously. That movement too slowed down eventually. It then seemed to shake itself on its forelegs. And it fell suddenly on its side in the grass splashing the mud. Its trunk was rolling on the grass as if it were another animal. It tried to sniff us through the end of its nostril in its trunk when it lost its conscience.

Dr.K got into action briskly, sitting beside the elephant. I helped him. I could feel the sharp eyes of the other elephants from the bamboo groves around us. I was wondering what would happen to us if the elephants felt that we were doing something wrong!

A broken beer bottle, half of its entire size, had got into the elephant’s leg. There was pus formed all around it. The colony of worms that inhabited it had created a beehive like abscess. When Dr.K cut it open, it burst like a pot of yoghurt and the pus gushed out. Inside the abscess were cellular structures like those inside a beehive that had white worms wriggling. With his axe like tool he cut open the entire infected area. There were worms everywhere and on my hands too. I tossed them aside. After cutting open the entire infected area, he carved aside the flesh around the beer bottle, spread it apart and pulled out the broken beer bottle. I was surprised to see that the broken bottle was of the size of my palms.

“It shouldn’t be more than a week, so it survived,” he said. More pus was flowing from the wound. He sliced off the entire flesh and threw it out. There was now the smell not so much of pus as that of blood. When the blood started to overflow the wounded area he took a pillow sized quantity of cotton, dipped it in medicine, stuffed it in the wound and bandaged it tightly with a band. The band had a glue that stuck on to it tightly. And he pinned it further with stainless steel clips on its skin that was like the rugged cloth of a tent. And finally he covered it entirely with the mud that lay around.

We got up after placing in its ears the signaling device for locating it. There was pus and blood all over our hands and dress. We shook off the worms, gathered our articles and started to leave. When we were washing our hands in the pond, the other elephants came down one by one trumpeting and surrounded the injured one. An old elephant rubbed the bandage with its trunk. It made a kind of approving sound after inspecting it to which all the other elephants responded loudly. A few elephants were sniffing the blood that was spread around. One of them stared at us with its ears pushed forward.

“It won’t remove the bandage, right?” I asked. He said, “It knows. But the elephants don’t like white color. If I had not covered it with mud, it would have been scratching its leg restlessly.” I asked him further if it would get cured. He said, “It will be back to its old self in fifteen days. The elephant has enormous resistance. Even a simple antibiotic would work very effectively”. “What a divine being!” the Doctor was exclaiming on our way back to Topslip. “The day welost all the elephants in Tamilnadu would be an insult to our Tamil culture itself. We will have to burn the entire Sangam literature[3], if that happened.”

Continued…

[1] Kumki is the local name for captive, trained Indian Elephants. These are used mostly for taming and training of newly captured wild elephants and also to lead away wild elephants that stray in to human settlements.

[2] Epitaph to a Dog – Byron

When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth, Unknown by Glory, but upheld by Birth,

The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe, And storied urns record who rests below.

When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen,

Not what he was, but what he should have been. But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend,

The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own,

Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth,

Denied in heaven the Soul he held on earth – While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven, And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour, Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power –

Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust, Degraded mass of animated dust!

Like this:

I can’t help getting annoyed picking up the phone when it rings at six O clock in the morning. I always sleep late. In this forest where except in the months of April and May when it is always raining, most people would go to sleep around 8 PM itself. The slumber of midnight falls on these villages around 7.30 PM itself!

The problem is that even the forest officials are asleep at that time. So, I take my jeep and go to a camp, pick up a few officials and go around the forest around 9 PM. I consider this as an important part of my work. It makes me feel like a Forest officer after the drudgery of the day when I have to wade through dull paperwork.

The telephone hung up. Unless there was something important no one calls in the morning in a forest. For, everyone in the forest offices knows the forest well. Who could it be? Was there any problem? But back to sleep, my senses were driving me. My thoughts were getting clouded and as I was in the verge of losing control and giving up, the telephone rang again.

Now I knew who the caller was and why he called me. I got excited. How could I forget it? Can I remember only the everyday routine of my work? I picked up the receiver. It was Anand at the other end. “You didn’t wake up yet?”, he asked. “No, I slept late last night”, I said. It was cold. I pulled the blanket all over me as I stretched myself on the chair to continue talking with him.

“I knew it when the Cultural minister personally called me yesterday. I left immediately to see him. I had a scotch with him in his home garden. He was very impressed. Everyone in the committee was excited about it. He asked me if he could meet the Doctor personally. I told him that he was going to come here anyway to receive the award. He said that it was different and that he wanted to see him in his work environment. I asked him his convenient time to arrange for it”.

“So…?” “Well, everything is confirmed. The list has been okayed in the minister’s office and sent for the President’s approval. It will be on his table this morning and would be signed by 1 PM or 2 PM. The President doesn’t come to the office after his lunch. It will be on the press release at 4 PM and will be in the evening news at 5.30”.

I felt as if all the cells of my body burst like a bubble and that I was shrinking smaller and smaller till I disappeared. “Hey”, called Anand. I felt as if my voice was like a bubble in my throat and my attempt to answer only tried to burst it. “Thank You”, I could say that only in a feeble voice before I lost control of myself and burst into tears.

“Take it easy…” he said. I was trying to take control of myself. After a few emotional moments I said, “Thank You very much. I won’t forget this. Whatever my feelings are, it is immaterial. A wonderful thing has happened. Really, I am at a loss of words …” I was immersed in a deluge of feelings that overwhelmed me. It was as if a huge water tank above me burst open and poured its entire contents of cold water all over me. I felt like screaming, hitting something and dancing wild!

“Come on”, he said. I was now laughing and said, “I feel like dancing”. He laughed too and said, “Why don’t you? In fact, I am myself very much excited. It was eleven PM when I came home last night and I called you four times. You didn’t pick up the phone”. “I was in the forest”. “Right, that’s why I called you in the morning. I couldn’t help it though I knew it was too early. Actually, I couldn’t sleep the whole night…Nor could I speak about it to anyone before it got finalized”.

“You did a great job”, I said. “Well, this is our duty. We are paid only for this. But we do all kinds of unnecessary things. Only on rare occasions I feel like we are doing something related to our education. I should thank you for providing me an opportunity like this. I am feeling very content”. His voice was also breaking and I was now amused. “Hey, I think it is you who are going to cry now”. “Bye”, he snapped, and cut the phone.

For a while I was sitting dumb without knowing what to do. It was the first time I was feeling the weight of a contented mind. I felt I couldn’t stand up with that weight on me. After a few long breaths my mind became lighter. I lit the stove and made some black tea. I took it hot in a cup and opened the door and went outside. There was a faint light in the front-yard. Beyond that it was still night in the thick woods. The murmur of the forest was all around me.

The tea turned cold quickly. I was warming my hands rolling them on the cup and watching the pebbles in the front yard catch the morning sun. There was a crumbling sound on the roof of the house. A toddy cat looked at me from the edge. After watching me for a while it walked down the roof, got down through the pole that I used for tying a line to dry my clothes, and vanished into the jungle climbing the Teak tree at the other end of the line. I went inside and brushed my teeth. What can I do today? It is better to wait till evening. But I wanted to be with him. I felt that it was not a day to keep writing absurd letters. I wanted to be with him the whole day. I will take the transistor with me. When the news came, I should be the one to tell him. When he was least expecting it, I should fall at his feet and convey him my respects.

He should never know that I was behind it. He should know it only in course of time. What would he do if he knew it? He wouldn’t say anything. As is his habit, he might say “Thank you, very much” without seeing me, then smile at me a little later and turn back again. Or he might start talking about Byron or Kabilar[1] without any context. That smile alone would be enough. It would be an acknowledgement that I also had human feelings. It would be like a gold coin on a beggar’s bowl.

I got into my sweater and a windcheater, pulled on my gloves and started my motorcycle. In the tourist quarters there were a few youth standing in their sweaters and monkey-caps. They were probably waiting for their jeep. They were least aware of the necessity of silence in a place as that. There were behaving like excited monkeys jumping and screaming.

I entered into the jungle roads. The leaves over my head were shedding water. The sound of my wheels on the dry leaves over the road alerted all the small animals and they started running around. In the distance, a Nilgiri Langur made the muffled sound of a trumpet. It was keeping a watch. Perched on the top of the tallest tree it looked around all directions.

Its muffled sound became faster and louder as I went near that tree. The other Langurs that sat in the lower branches hurriedly climbed to the top. I saw the dark tails of a few monkeys hanging from two trees. There should be around twenty monkeys. I could feel that they were all watching me. When I drove past them, the one that kept watch started making sounds in specific intervals. Hearing that sound the Sambars would come out of their hiding and start grazing again.

I went past the dam. There was a layer of steam on the surface. The metal road that went sliding along the dam was laid by the Britishers for riding on a horse. A jeep could go on it with difficulty, but not a motor-cycle. Four years before on that road where it met a slope, I came across the ‘Elephant Doctor’, Doctor Krishnamoorthy. I had joined Forest Services only two before. I had worked in Coonoor for a year, eight months at Kalakaad, two and half months at Coimbatore and I had come to Topslip.

Four days passed in trying to make sense of my office. The first major work came up when on a morning Marimuthu announced that the forest officials had found the carcass of an elephant. My boss and his assistants had left for the spot early in the morning.

I was a little late to arrive there after my bath. I didn’t realize the gravity of the news. I even stopped for a while in the grassland on my way and watched a group of Bisons grazing there. When I arrived at the spot after a bouncy ride over the horse lane scattered all over with rocks, I found that I was late. I asked Marimuthu who were there. In his elaborate style of conversation he replied that the DFO was there, for he was in the nearby guest house. And the ‘Elephant Doctor’ as well, for he lived in the Elephant camp. The elephant doctor, he explained, must have been the first to arrive.

That was the first time I heard the name ‘Elephant Doctor’. I guessed that it was the name of a veterinary doctor who was appointed at the Elephant Camp at Topslip. I started smelling the sickening stench as my jeep was nearing the spot. It hung like a layer that I had to pierce to get inside. As we drove further I felt that not only my nose but my entire body was revolted by it. My body was shaking with the repeated sensation of throwing up. I covered my mouth and nose tight with my hand-kerchief.

I threw up the moment I got down from the jeep. I couldn’t do anything for a while. When I stood up, I was feeling dizzy. But I didn’t want to show my weakness and hence I pretended to walk straight. The regular government employees always grudged officers like me recruited directly by the public service commission. While they had to climb the ladder of their career the hard way uphill, breathlessly fighting a fierce competition, we were thought of landing at the summit through an examination!

It is true too. We can function only through them. But we have to control them through our brain power. Though we were dependent on them we had to create the impression of the converse. We were trained for that. The powers that were above us and which controlled them needed us as a liaison. We were spies of some kind, a mouthpiece or even the lashing end of such powers.

Everyone in that small crowd was standing on a small rising on the ground with their faces covered in a hand-kerchief dipped in eau-de-cologne. I was given one too. I felt as if the inner membrane of my nose went aflame by the eau-de-cologne after wearing it. There was another wave of intense stench in the air. The small crowd parting, I saw what was before me. I couldn’t make sense of anything for a few moments. On a muddy pit around twenty feet in length and ten feet in breadth there stood an elderly man wearing gum boots and hat, holding a large knife. All over his dress, hands and face, he was covered with mud that was also dripping. It was as if he had dipped in that pit that contained an excretory material.

In a few moments I understood what it was. It was the rotten carcass of an elephant that died many days before. It was torn open and spread like an open tent on all four sides. All its legs were stretched on its sides. The trunk and the head showed up beneath its spread skin. Inside its body its rotten flesh looked simmering. I also noticed a few movements inside it. It gave an impression of mud boiling with bubbles. They were all worms. They were crawling all over him up to his knees. He was shaking them off his hands and neck as he worked.

I couldn’t stand there after seeing it. I backed out unable to fix my eyes on a sight as that. I didn’t know what happened. It was as if someone pulled the ground under my feet. I fell backwards. I heard alarmed voices carrying me to the jeep and laying me there. When I tried to raise my head, I threw up on the person who was carrying me. My hands that were holding him were shivering. I closed my eyes again. It was as if I was falling into an endless abyss.

“Take him to his room and let him rest”, the District Collector was saying. They laid me in the back seat and took me home. Whenever I opened my eyes the foliage above me appeared like the layer of water that was green colored with algae matter passing behind me. The bright sun that came in between the leaves glared my eyes. I sat up suddenly. Sitting on the seat, I looked at the floor of the jeep. I shuddered mistaking a cigarette butt for a worm. I shook my shirt and the seat. Unsure yet, I removed my wind cheater and shook it. I didn’t feel like wearing it back on.

I came back to my room and went to my bed. “Can I make tea?” Marimuthu asked. I refused. I had the constant sensation of throwing up. I closed my eyes. I tried to force my memories elsewhere. But the huge dissected carcass kept looming in my vision. The carcass with the dark chunks of its rotting flesh, and beneath it, the bones and ribs still retaining their shape! I twisted and turned. No, let me think of something else. But, it was in vain.

I could have eventually fallen asleep. But I awoke alarmed dreaming of falling into a pool filled with worms and drowning in it. I was drenched in sweat and was shivering. I got up, opened my wardrobe, took out the the whiskey bottle, and looked for a glass. I mixed it with some water in the tea cup and gulped it. I was badly shaken. I kept on drinking. It was four times the quantity I would normally drink. My stomach burned. My hiccups only brought the acid to my mouth and made things worse.

I start feeling as if my neck cannot support my head anymore. I lay down on my back. The roof appeared to have slid down a so close that I could touch it! My hands and legs felt as if they were apart from my body. Sleep was weighing hard on my eyelids. My mouth was constantly feeling bitter. I felt like getting to drink some water. The thought didn’t seem to connect with my body. I lay down helpless!

I woke when a worm slowly climbed on me and rubbed on my face. It should be midnight. The door was locked. Marimuthu had set the mosquito net over me. When I stood up, my legs were shaking like rubber. I held the wall for support, went to the toilet and peed. Holding the wall all along, I walked to the kitchen. When I saw the food in a closed container, I felt hungry.

Sitting at the dining table, I started eating some food. Even before half way through it, the entire quantity of rice looked like white worms. I threw up right on it. I dumped the plate in the sink and rinsed my mouth. On a sudden impulse, I started slamming my head with my hands. I felt like rushing in my car to Pollachi and further drive to Tirunelveli and to Nanguneri and cry in my mom’s laps. Shaking my head, I kept muttering, “I am dying”. Tears rolled from my eyes.

I finished drinking the remaining whiskey in a frenzy, though my lungs, stomach and nostrils burned, and tears were flowing. I sat in my bed waiting for sleep to overcome me. I was feeling the worms all over my hands and legs. Their mere touch burned my skin and sent a shiver in my spine. My bed seemed made of worms. I fell on the worms and got buried in them.

The next day when I went to my office, I enquired about the Elephant Doctor and found details about him. Everyone had a story to say about him. Dr. V. Krishnamoorthy [2] came there as a veterinary doctor thirty years before. His duty was to provide medication for the wild and domesticated animals there. But slowly he became a specialist in treating elephants. After some renown as an authority on elephants in Tamilnadu Forest department, he was sought for consultation wherever there was a problem with an elephant. Not only in India, but all over the world as well.

I was told that Dr.Krishnamoorthy could have done surgical procedures for more than a thousand elephants. He had conducted delivery for more than three hundred elephants. He had done post-mortem for hundreds of elephants. In fact, he was the one who created the methodology for doing post-mortem on elephants. He had successfully implanted metal bones for fractured ones in more than ten occasions.

It was the regulations that Dr.Krishnamoorthy created for treating elephants that are used today by the Indian Forest Department as guidelines. I was told that similar guidelines based on his formulation are being used for treating the Rhinos in Kaziranga forests. He was known as Dr.K to all those all over the world who had an interest or did research in elephants. He has been mentioned in hundreds of books. The internationally famous wildlife documentary producer Harry Marshall had produced a documentary titled Dr.K for BBC. He was a living legend.

When I went to the elephant camp two weeks later, Dr.K passed me in a jeep the opposite direction. When I gave way for his jeep, he smiled at me and asked Marimuthu to bring him some ginger when he came to see him. He smiled at me one more time before he left. He had a long face without a moustache. His forehead was an extension of his bald head that had dense grey hair on both sides. He had a firm nose and the enthusiastic eyes of a curious child. There was some hair protruding from his ears. There was a deep line on both sides of his small mouth that made his face look intense, but his smile with his well-formed teeth was winsome.

Only after he left I realized that I didn’t smile back at him, nor did I say a Hello to him. I cursed myself for that. “What Sir?”, asked Marimuthu. “Ants”, I said. Marimuthu started elaborating: “Yes, Sir. The flower is covered with it. If it falls on you, it will sure bite you. Though it is a small ant, you will have a big swelling.” I had been thinking of him all the time for the past fifteen days. He was there in my conscience all the time. But when I met him in person, I lost my senses. It was like the shock one receives when one sees a picture from a book suddenly smiling at you.

What would he have thought? I was a higher ranked officer than him. Would he have thought I was arrogant because of my position? Would he have been hurt by it? From his facial reactions, I guessed that he didn’t care for all such things. I wanted to meet him again and convey him the respect I held for him. In fact, I wanted to ask the driver to turn the jeep but I didn’t have the nerves for it.

Ten days went so. In those ten days I had offered my apologies to him in my mind in hundred different ways. But I felt I didn’t have the nerves to speak with him in person. Twice I went as far as his house in my jeep but returned. I didn’t understand the reason for my hesitation. In that forest, he was loved by everyone and was also close with them. Half of them got medicines from him for their fevers and injuries. Every morning I saw tribal old woman in old shawls carrying their bottles to him to get their medicines.

“They has no disease, Sir. They are going to him for the biscuits and sweet flour he gives,” said Marimuthu. The office clark Shanmugam said, “True, Sir. He will enquire about their health and if these women blabber something he would listen to them patiently and say a few good things. They are going for that. Whatever, he is a blessed man. You can’t refuse it. When I had a blister in my legs he removed it, gave me some medicines and cured me.”

“They are all medicines meant for the cows, Sir,” said Marimuthu. “What?” “Yes, Sir” agreed Shanmugam, “It is the same medicines for both animals and men. Only the dosage would vary. Sometimes he would just inject some water and give some herbs.” Marimuthu continued, “When he can treat such huge beings as elephants, what is so surprising that he could treat human beings who are so small in comparison?”

I once saw his jeep passing the employees quarters and all the children merrily following it and excitedly calling him by the name he was known there. He stopped the jeep and asked each child something to which they were answering him with glee amidst laughter. I shut down my jeep and watched it till he left.

I was getting more and more impressed by such images of his simplicity and dedication, but these impressions were keeping me away from him as well. I wondered if he would look at me from another time frame I had no knowledge of. Something like an Ashoka, Akbar or a Gandhi speaking to me? How would I face it? I didn’t have the right words. But I prepared them to speak with him, in various patterns. In course of time, I started enjoying them and would immerse myself in them.

I thought I would come across him by accident, and so it happened. One day when I was viewing the forest I heard a whirring sound and I looked at the sky. I was surprised to see a Great Hornbill. My eyes followed it. It sat on the branch of a tall tree. I had known this bird, but I hadn’t seen it. It was a bird that looked like a bald man who wore a black coat over a white dhoti. It had the size of a big turkey.

When it came flying by and settled down on the tree, its wing span was very impressive. Its beaks looking like a big wooden spoon inverted on its head, it was squawking as it sat on the branch. I knew that this bird would always be with its mate. The one on the branch was a male and the female was somewhere around.

Looking for the female, I found it sitting peacefully in the bushes. I couldn’t see it clearly. I moved around and something strange happened. It was like an electric shock. My body and my forearms had a burning sensation. I wasn’t sure if it was pain or irritation. But the moment I saw the plant that touched my feet, I realized the cause of my trouble. Its leaves were like those of a Hibiscus plant but were thicker and had minute thorns. Was it a Senthatti plant?

I didn’t know what to do. Senthatti was a small plant. This one was up to my waist and had big leaves. Was it some other poisonous plant? I felt as if the itchy feeling was growing more and more every moment. More than that, it was the fear that overcame me. I went to the housing quarters that were nearby and asked Marimuthu. He said, “Let’s go to the Elephant Doctor”. I asked him, “Can we try any other Doctor?” He said, “For that we have to go to the city. He is nearby. In five minutes he can give you an injection and you will be alright. You have come from the town, but we have been living here all the time. Nothing of this kind happens to us”.

Even before I refused he had started the jeep and started driving towards Dr.K’s house. It is all for good, I thought. I now had a valid reason to see him. But I was excited. In the expectation of meeting him, I even forgot the irritation I was suffering from.

As expected, Dr.K was in his clinic, which was a tin shed. There were a few reindeers which were walking around excitedly inside a cage. Outside the shed a sad looking elephant was picking up a sugar-cane from a bunch patiently and chewing it. The mahout was sleeping on a bench near it.

Dr.K was squatting and carefully drawing something in his pipette. When he saw me, he smiled and continued his work. Marimuthu told him that I was bit by the Senthatti plant. He was elaborating that I had entered into the forest, that such plants don’t affect him, and since I was new to that place I was having the itch, but he wouldn’t have the same, and that he had requested and brought me there.

Dr.K turned back at me and said, “This one is a plant in this forest. It is a different version of Senthatti. I can give you an anti-histamine injection. But if you prefer so, you can keep washing it with ice water. Either way, it will be alright in an hour.” He kept the pipette in a fridge and checked my arms and waist. “Nothing wrong. In one hour it will subside. It will be fully gone by tomorrow. Did you scratch?”

“Yes,” I said. He smiled. “Let’s do one thing. Try not to scratch. It will be itching, but watch intensely that itch. Why is your mind alarmed? Why do you want to be cured immediately? Think of all such things. Can you do that? I will give an injection if you insist.” I said “No, I don’t want it. I will do what you said.” “Good, let’s have a tea”, he said.

“What happened to these reindeers?’, I asked. “Some infection. That’s why I wanted to bring them to me. I want to see what happens in a four or five days. Just now I have taken a culture sample. I have to send it to Coimbatore. Are you from the South?”, he said. “Yes, Tirunelveli…Naanguneri.” “My mom’s native is also that. One of the NavaThirupathis…The Perumal there has a beautiful name. I remember it … Magaranedunguzhaikaathan.” I said it was Thenthirupperai, the name of that city in the NavaThirupathis the Perumal resided at. “Yes, been there?” he asked. “Many times. It is a beautiful Temple”. “Yes, there is a big Agraharam…still retains the antiquity. Please sit down”, he requested.

He was making a tea for me. Lighting the stove, he continued, “It is a good habit to observe pain. There is no meditation equal to that. Pain will clearly show who we are and how our mind and intelligence functions. What is pain? It is a different state from our normal state. But our mind rebels to come back to that normal state. That is the complexity behind pain. Half of the pain in pain would vanish if we learned to observe it. Well, there are unbearable pains no doubt. They are only proofs of the fact that man is not a great being and that he is only just another animal.”

He brought the tea and sat down near me and continued: “In fact, man is the weakest animal. If you witness the majesty with which other animals can tolerate their pain, you will get emotional. Even if the pain was mortal, the elephants don’t scream or writhe. Its eyes would shrink and a few parts of its body alone would shake. It will be so patient that you can conduct delivery without any anesthesia. What a being! God must have created it when he was in a good mood.”

I remembered having heard that that he would invariably start talking about elephants in a few moments after he spoke with anyone, and was amused by it. “Not only the elephant, but also every other animal as the bison and the Cheetah. They know it,” he continued, “I have conducted delivery on a cow. Only its eyes would be rolling and its head bent down. They all know that this is how life is…only Man makes a big scene of it. He would start running for medicines. Tries something or the other and creates more problems…he is a pathetic being. By the way, do you read books?”

“I do,” I said and he continued. “You should read Gandhiji. He is the only thinker who has the power to influence the thoughts of this generation. He would have said something original on everything he wrote on. My favorite writers are Gandhiji and Sri Aurobindo. And I read whatever I can lay my hands on.” He handed me the cup of tea as he was talking. A sudden thought shook me. I couldn’t hold the cup in my hands. I felt as if it was dirty outside and had a layer of worms inside.

What a wretched thought? He is a doctor and would know how to keep his hands clean. And that autopsy was conducted a month before. But, there could be dirt in his finger nails… What is happening to me? I was unconsciously rubbing a small speck of dirt on the cup. I couldn’t take the cup to my mouth. Is he noticing it? I was mentally sick. He doesn’t have any such horrors. But he might have touched the excretory stuff of some animal even a few minutes before. Did he wash his hands? He should have, but …

I closed my eyes and gulped the entire cup of tea. My throat and tongue burned by its heat. “Oh, my…” the doctor exclaimed, “Has it gone cold? I will make another cup. I drink tea very hot, but you seem to drink hotter than mine.” As the tea went inside, I had a thought arising. Why such horror? I have the same excretory stuff inside me too. The same body fluids, mucous, fecal matter and urine. I am also like them all. But …

“You fainted that day, right?” he asked. I was surprised that he was able to read my mind. “For thirty years I have been advocating post-mortem on every animal that dies in the forest. However rotten it is. It wasn’t so before. One in three big animals that die is through murders. The reason is man,” he continued, “In olden days half of the animals would die before any transmittable disease started spreading.” “What if the carcass had rotten too much…” I asked. He said, “There should be some evidence. There is a methodology to identify it. I wrote it.” I said I knew that.

“You were scared by the worms, right? Many people get scared by worms. If they observed why they were scared, they can get over it. One can get over horror, suspicion and cowardice through introspection. You should have seen a black colored fly the size of a tamarind seed. It should be there in your house too”. “Yes,” I said, “I live with them. I have seen them falling in my food too. I take care to check my food before I eat and drive them away if I find them.” “The worm that you saw that day was the baby of that fly. Why be horrified with the baby?” he asked.

I was taken aback. “All worms are like infants. They can’t walk or fly. They just keep on crawling. The only thing they know is eating. They keep on doing that. It is like our children…If you compare with an infant and eat accordingly you would have to drink thirty liters of milk a day”, he continued, “They have that command, that is, to eat quickly whatever they get and grow up.” He stopped and asked me, “Does it appear like crack-pot philosophy?” I said I didn’t find it so. He continued his discourse.

I talked with him that whole day. I hadn’t seen a conversationalist as him before. His conversation touched on humor, literature, philosophy and science in turns. I felt like what James Bond did as I listened to him: hop into a chopper from a car, fly a while, jumped on a boat, sail in the lake and then sped in a motorcycle parked ashore. From that day onwards, I met him at least thrice a week. He would give me books and discuss them.

Continued…

[1] Kabilar is one of the well known poets of Sangam period of Tamil Literature (600 BC to 300 AD).